The Heat (22 page)

But had the witness protection officers come and gone?

Wyatt thought about that and decided no. Major crimes detectives would want to search anything requested by Leah Quarrell before it was delivered to her: clothing pockets, diaries, correspondence, footwear, toiletry bags…

It was time to move from the coffee shop. Forty minutes was long enough to sit alone, reading, sipping from a cup.

He got to his feet, tucked the newspaper under his arm and sauntered down to the water, passing Quarrell's house on the opposite footpath. A uniform stared at him a beat too long, confirming Wyatt's notion that they'd been told to expect trouble, but Wyatt wasn't the only rubbernecker taking an interest in the police activity.

He stopped when he reached the river. Looking back, he saw the police cars pull out. He strolled up to Moorindil Street again.

This time he stood in the window of Riffs & Reels, flipping through shallow cardboard trays of new and used CDs and DVDs. The place smelled of dust and incense. He was the oldest person there, but no one noticed. The place attracted obsessives in all shapes and sizes.

Eventually Wyatt saw a plain white sedan nose into Leah Quarrell's street. It stopped outside Quarrell's house and the driver, a woman, got out, glanced around once and walked to the front door. She consulted a sheet of paper briefly, then selected a key from a bunch, unlocked the door and went in.

If she was there to collect a list of Leah Quarrell's clothing and personal effects, it would be a five-minute task. Wyatt stopped browsing and left the shop and headed for the stolen twin-cab.

And, as he approached one of the outside tables of the coffee shop, he noticed the intent way a woman drinking coffee was watching Leah Quarrell's house. Facing away from him, she was dark haired, slim and elegant with more of continental Europe about her than any other woman on the coast that day. A moment later she rose swiftly and strode along the footpath ahead of him, slowing as she reached a white Corolla with a rental sticker.

Holding back, crouching behind a wheelie bin, Wyatt watched Hannah Sten peer in at the Corolla's rear seat and the footwell between both rows of seats. After that, she walked around to the other side of the car and checked the front passenger footwell. She's had training of some kind, he thought. Habits of self-preservation that he used himself.

Apparently satisfied that her car was empty, Sten pressed the button on her ignition key. She opened the driver's door, manoeuvred herself onto the seat, lifting one leg in and then the other, and when she was at her most vulnerable, searching for the seatbelt, Wyatt slipped in behind her and ground his pistol barrel into the hinge of her jaw.

He rasped, ‘Tell me what you're doing here.'

33

Hannah Sten hadn't intended to come to Australia. She'd despatched the lawyer Rafael Halperin to negotiate the return of her painting. But one afternoon, as she waited in her Bruges apartment for word from him, she'd received a call from a Frankfurt gallery director. He said an American had been putting out discreet feelers in the art world, looking to unload a David Teniers painting considered lost during the Second World War. Of course it could have been a different American, a different Teniers painting, but her Frankfurt colleague passed on a description of the painting and she had no doubt that it was hers.

She made her own discreet enquiries in New York: Rafael Halperin was considered a brilliant lawyer but a careless gambler. He was deeply in debt. And, strangely for a man who knew everything about reclaiming stolen Nazi-era art, he had no art or art-world credentials.

And so she'd flown straight to Sydney, then taken a connecting flight north to the Sunshine Coast airport and a taxi to Halperin's hotel apartment in Noosa. Halperin, a little miffed to see her, had assured her he was on top of things. Sten had shaken her head, obtained David Minto's Gold Coast address from him and given him his marching orders.

‘You may go home now. Thank you for your hard work. I shall take possession of the painting myself.'

‘But—' he said.

She gave him a bonus and a brisk, neutral smile, then said goodbye and flew down to the Gold Coast, taking a room at a resort five hundred metres from David Minto's house.

That was ten days ago. She understood why Minto, an absurd man in a hideous mansion on an artificial waterway, had only let her meet once with the man who was to steal the painting. Understood why she could not be privy to Mr Wyatt's movements. He was the expert, after all. A man like that would not wish to feel eyes looking over his shoulder. Indeed, he'd be unlikely to tolerate it and might simply walk away. He was hired, but he was not bought.

Hannah Sten knew that. She kept telling herself that. Still, it rankled a little, and when no news good or bad had come from Minto by 4 p.m. yesterday, she'd found herself pacing in her room at the resort, jaw clenched. Out to the balcony, to and fro in her room, up and down the corridor. ‘I expect Wyatt to strike during the football grand final,' Minto had said. ‘As soon as he's clear, he'll get word to me and we'll arrange the exchange.'

So close now, after years of searching, months of failed negotiation by Halperin and an expensive agreement with Minto.

After one more circuit of her room, Sten switched on the television set. Football, football, everywhere. Horse racing. Car racing. Barely articulate young men and women struggling to account for a sporting result. And the game of Australian Rules football, at which Thomas Ormerod was in attendance. Not just pointless, like most games, but incomprehensible too.

Then a banner headline scrolled across the bottom of the screen:
Shots fired in Noosa: police hunt an armed man
. She froze.

More banner stories: a fatal crash on a Gold Coast highway, rioting in Cairo, a passenger plane lost in the Andes. Hannah zapped through the channels, finding a twenty-four-hour news service. Similar international stories, then an Australian story, the minister for immigration accused of misleading Parliament, more on the car crash. Finally a shot of Iluka Islet from the air, the narrow ring road choked with police cars and uniforms. Another angle, a camera on the water this time. Detectives and uniformed police hazy shapes through the sliding glass wall of Thomas Ormerod's house. Shots fired, some property damage but no reports of arrests or hospitalisations. A man on the run, believed to be armed and dangerous.

Hannah picked up the room phone, dialled Minto's number. He came on the line and she said, ‘What has gone wrong?'

Minto sounded edgy. ‘I've only just heard myself.'

‘And?'

‘Wyatt called me. Police were waiting for him. The painting was not on the wall.'

‘Ormerod moved it?'

‘Possibly. All Wyatt said was no painting and ambushed by the police.'

‘He is wounded?'

‘No.'

‘Who did this?'

‘I don't know,' Minto said, and she didn't believe him.

‘Nobody knew but you, your niece and your private investigator.'

Silence.

‘I paid Mr Wyatt a great deal of money,' she said.

‘I realise that, Hannah, and let me assure you—'

Hannah Sten wasn't interested. ‘Do you trust Mr Wyatt?'

‘Absolutely.'

‘A ruse, maybe? He steals the painting, shoots his gun, calls you to say he has been attacked?'

‘He wouldn't do that.'

‘Maybe you stole the painting and arranged to have Mr Wyatt arrested, perhaps shot in a gun battle?'

‘Hannah, please,' drawled Minto.

‘You made a separate arrangement with Thomas Ormerod.'

‘Absolutely not.'

‘Your niece: you trust her?'

A pause. ‘I thought I did.'

‘You have police contacts, yes?'

‘Yes.'

‘You will learn from these people the true story,' Hannah said, and it was not a request.

She ended the call, paced the room. Would the police come for her, too? She had commissioned a burglary, after all. Would Wyatt come for her?

An hour ticked by. She packed her case, paced her room again, and then her phone beeped, indicating an incoming email. It was from Minto, saying:
This just came in
. Attached were a message and a photograph of the Teniers painting. The message was a ransom demand, signed ‘Wyatt', demanding a hundred thousand dollars or he'd destroy the painting. The photograph was proof of possession, and showed the painting hanging on a wall, that day's Brisbane
Courier-Mail
propped on a dining chair beneath it. A hopeful headline in huge letters, ‘Hear the Lion Roar'.

She called Minto.

Strain in his voice: ‘None of it makes any sense.'

‘It makes perfect sense to me,' she replied.

‘But he assured me the painting was gone and the police were there in large numbers, as if prepared. He's pulled several jobs for me, never let me down once.'

‘I have paid in advance, Mr Minto. You have not supplied the service I paid for. You will fix this.'

‘I don't know how to start.'

‘What news of your niece?'

Minto coughed. ‘The police have her.'

Hannah Sten cut the call. She stood very still at the centre point of the room.

Eventually, she moved. She took her case downstairs and checked out. She drove her Hertz Corolla north from the Gold Coast to the Marriott Hotel in Noosa, where she rented a suite using a set of false ID. She showered, changed for dinner and ate in the dining room at a table overlooking the cove, a black mass that heaved and sometimes glistened in the light of the moon.

Returning to her room, she switched on the television set and learned that Minto had been found shot dead, an execution-style gunshot wound to the back of the head.

His ugly, unmistakeable house appeared on the screen.

Wyatt? It made sense, if he was cleaning up. That would make her next on his list.

Would he have chiselled information from Minto? The address of the resort she'd since left, for example?

Feeling marginally safe, Hannah Sten thought long and hard about her next move.

Leah Quarrell, she thought.

34

The tip of Wyatt's pistol touched her jaw and Hannah Sten turned fractionally, nudging against the barrel, until she could see his face. ‘You have a nerve, Mr Wyatt.'

‘Keep still, both hands on the wheel where I can see them.'

‘I am not armed.'

‘You shot at me earlier.'

‘I did not. I am not armed.'

Something about her voice and body, a hint of unfeigned indignation. Wyatt thought she was telling the truth. He could guess why she was in Noosa—she'd watched the news, just as he had. And Minto would have forwarded the ransom demand. ‘I don't have your painting.'

She was silent a while. ‘I saw a number of scenarios: you were cheated by Miss Quarrell, you were both cheated by the private investigator, you cheated everyone. Several permutations…'

They sat there. Hannah Sten was calm, her hair faintly perfuming the air in the car, her slender forearms unmoving on the steering wheel, watching him in the rear-view mirror. In her lightly accented English she said, ‘I paid money in advance. I have yet to see a return on that money. Instead, we have a shooting at Thomas Ormerod's house, Mr Minto's niece is arrested, Mr Minto is murdered, and I am sent a ransom demand.'

‘Not by me. Police were waiting for me in the house. And the painting was already missing.'

‘What do
you
believe happened, Mr Wyatt?'

The noonday sun beat down on the car. ‘Engine on, air conditioner on,' Wyatt said.

‘Certainly.'

Soon cool air flowed through to Wyatt. He sat half turned to watch, through the back window, for the witness protection car to leave Leah Quarrell's driveway. He guessed he had four or five minutes. Maybe three. Not much time to thrash things out with the client.

He moved the gun away from her jaw. ‘It seems we have come to the same conclusion, the answer lies with Minto's niece.'

‘Yes,' said Sten.

She said nothing more, sat very still. All Wyatt could see was the almost imperceptible movements of her torso as she breathed. But, like him, she was watching the wing and rear-view mirrors for the witness protection sedan to emerge.

‘Tell me about the ransom.'

Sten moved her upper body, twisting in the driver's seat and reaching her right hand towards her bag, black leather on a thin strap. ‘My phone,' she said.

‘Reach in with the thumb and forefinger of your left hand,' Wyatt said.

Hannah Sten snorted. ‘I do not have a weapon.'

‘Left hand, thumb and forefinger.'

Wyatt watched her retrieve an iPhone and thrust it to him between the seats. He didn't touch it. ‘Show me.'

Her fingers flicked the screen. He saw a photograph of the painting on an anonymous wall—not Thomas Ormerod's. A newspaper propped on a chair. The ransom demand, his name. ‘Not Minto—he wouldn't have had time.'

Sten half turned in her seat. ‘Did you shoot him?'

‘No. I thought maybe you had,' Wyatt said.

‘I was denied that pleasure.'

Wyatt darted a look through the back window, then opened his door, eased out, and slid onto the passenger seat beside Hannah Sten. She watched him with an amused smile but her eyes were dark, wary.

‘You were in the Israeli military at one point,' Wyatt said, recalling her examination of the car.

She shrugged. ‘An obligation for all young people.'

‘So you know how to fire a gun.'

‘I did not shoot at you, Mr Wyatt.'

Suddenly she moved, shoving the transmission into drive, her eyes on the car's mirrors. A moment later, the unmarked white Holden passed them, drawing away under slow acceleration. She said, ‘We must follow, yes?'

‘Yes,' Wyatt said.

They followed in silence, away from the Noosa area and down along the highway towards the airport. Sten drove expertly, keeping a couple of vehicles between the Corolla and the Holden. Her movements were economical, releasing further strains of perfumed air: shampoo, talc, body lotion. Subtle, pleasant. Not especially feminine but undeniably female. Wyatt pocketed the Ruger and settled back to watch the white car in the distance, waiting for it to turn off to the safe house.